Faculty & Staff
Emmanuel Agu
I am interested in how to create cool computer graphics in games. This usually involves using graphics techniques to make game objects and characters look realistic without slowing the game down. I am also interested in how to adapt games to small mobile devices such as cell phones, PDAs and game consoles. One tough problem in dealing with mobile devices is their limited battery power. To make mobiile device batteries last longer, we must find out what parts of graphics algorithms consume more energy and try modify them to reduce their energy consumption. Mobile devices have small screens and slow processors. One way to create nice graphics on these smaller mobile devices is to increase drawing detail in parts of the image where the eye notices changes and reduce effort in parts of the scene where the eye does not. Read more...
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Frederick Bianchi
I'm involved in real-time interactive applications, especially in the area of music and the performing arts. This includes virtual orchestra technology, algorithmic composition systems, sound installations, interactive audio, and sonification. Much of my work uses experimental interfaces that explore the limits of physical gesture and meta physics. Read more...
Mark Claypool
As any online gamer knows, latency (or lag) can kill a good game (no pun intended). Studying the effects of latency and coming up with clever ways to deal with it is my favorite research problem. The effects of other systems settings, such as frame rate, frame resolution and graphics settings, on game play and playbility are also quite interesting. My overall research interests include multimedia networking, congestion control, and network games. For games, I like First Person Shooter games and Real-Time Strategy games on PCs, Beat-'em Up games on consoles, and Sports games on hand-helds. Read more...
Jennifer deWinter
As a rhetorician, I find computer game studies a rich forum of research from how games convince people to think or do certain things to how people talk about games (nothing is more interesting to me than watching C-Span when congress-people are arguing about whether computer games kill people). My research has historically looked at the Japanese entertainment industry; however, I have recently turned my attention to emotions in game studies as well as women and games. My favorite games are Final Fantasy VII (only the best game ever) and Katamari Damacy (my favorite gateway game for all friends who profess a dislike of computer games). Read more...
Joseph Farbrook
I am a digital artist presently working with 3D video game engines to create virtual installation art, audio sculpture, Machinima, and hypertext narratives based in virtual environments. From a fine arts approach, I am also interested in DVD authoring, Internet art, CAVE, DOME, and other interactive animation work. Much of my research has been geared toward embedding a strong presence of the artist within digital objects and eliciting emotional response. I am fascinated by sensory immersion, 3D video, screen imagery, data projections, avatars, and telepresence. Although I work extensively with video game engines, I'm a bit of an NPC because I'm mostly interested in discovering what can be done with game engines beyond playing games. Read more...
David Finkel
My favorite games these days are MMOs and action-adventure games. In my IMGD teaching, I teach courses in game analysis and in the game development process. In these courses I am especially interested in looking at how the different elements of video games work together to create a challenging and fun experience. In my research, I examine what kinds of games different types of gamers choose to play. I'm also one of the Curators of the WPI Video Game Archive, where we collect old and new video games and consoles for teaching and research. Read more...
Jeffrey L. Forgeng
I'm cross-appointed as Curator at the Higgins Armory Museum, which means I spend my days among real mail shirts, bastard swords, and crossbows. None of them appear to have any magical properties, but museum artifacts can be full of surprises. Games and interactive media can be a great way to bring people in touch with the real stuff of history, and I've supervised quite a few IMGD projects relating to the museum's collections: 3-D artifacts to explore on the web; a "dress-the-knight" interactive; and a Siege of Jerusalem game where the players defend the city against the Crusaders. Read more...
Michael Gennert
Mike Gennert is Department Head of the Computer Science Department and Director of the Robotics Engineering Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He helped launch WPI's Interactive Media and Game Development program in 2005. He conducts research on making machines more intelligent and advises projects in game development, despite a complete lack of eye-hand coordination that renders him a thoroughly inept video game player. Read more...
Rob Lindeman
I'm interested in creating interfaces for next-generation gaming experiences. I like to use special-purpose input/output devices, such as steering wheels or snowboards, as opposed to generic game controllers. So, any physical device, such as a stair machine or a treadmill, can be outfitted with off-the-shelf or home-made sensors to grab input that we can feed to the game. Finally, I'm also very interested in increasing the "sense of presence" that gamers feel when playing games, and how to stimulate as many of the senses as possible to mimic the reality portrayed in a given game. I love driving games and platformers most, but don't get to play as much as I'd like. I also like all things Japanese. Oh, and Star Wars too. And Battlestar. You know what, any space-based scifi is aces with me. Read more...
Brian Moriarty
I was lucky enough to get into the computer game industry when it was still very young. Over the course of my career, I had the pleasure of creating titles for two of the legendary adventure publishers, Infocom and Lucasfilm Games. I also co-founded the Internet's first voice chat service, and have worked on a wide variety of products for the CD-ROM, mobile, downloadable and children's markets. I hope to share this deep experience with the students at WPI, while continuing to explore my interests in interactive fiction, virtual worlds, machinima and music. Read more...
Dean O'Donnell
I'm interested in game design, narrative, and the impact of new media on society. I've been writing stories for games and interactive narratives for over ten years, and I want to experiment with how we tell stories when we loosen our authorial grip. I'm interested in pen and paper role playing games, interactive fiction, and most recently, alternate reality games. I've been involved in developing a number of alternate reality games and I want to explore the possibilities of this very new medium. I'm also involved in telling stories through exploring virtual spaces. How can we construct a story based solely on found artifacts? I design projections for theatrical performances that utilize both 2D images and 3D virtual spaces. I'm also interested in small (might I say "casual"?) games that promote a point of view. Read more...
George Phillies
My IMGD-related research is centered on game design, especially the design of board and military strategy games. On one hand, board game design is a legitimate topic in its own right. On the other hand, a course in board game design can force students to confront the issue of game content, under conditions in which coding and artistic questions substantially do not arise. With co-author Tom Vasel I wrote and published two text books, Contemporary Perspectives in Game Design. Design Elements of Contemporary Strategy Games, on designing real games. The books focus on detailed elements of content and rules mechanics.
I own the world's largest collection of board wargames, which is used to provide a depth of examples that other authors cannot match. Read more...
Charles Rich
What gets me out of bed in the morning is the hope that I will one day be able to interact with a real artificial intelligence, and the belief that part of what I will do during the day contributes to that goal. Along the way to that goal, I am interested in all kinds of applications of AI - from those in computer games, such as interactive fiction, intelligent camera control and natural language understanding, to human-robot interaction. On a minor historical note, I was an architect of one of the earliest 3D multi-user virtual environments, called Diamond Park, demonstrated at the 1995 Comdex show in Las Vegas. Read more...
Joshua Rosenstock
I'm a multimedia artist and musician working in installation and performance art, sound, and video. Many of my artworks are living or autonomous systems that incorporate elements of improvisation and unpredictability. I'm fascinated by mass media and online culture, in particular the history of popular music, and my work frequently includes a of critique of cultural or social norms. I have wide-ranging interests and a short attention span so I always have many different projects in the works! Some of my research areas include: time-lapse video, electronic music production, wearable robots, microcontroller-based sound sculpture, experimental musical/video instruments and performance interfaces, living plant installations, Turntablism and VJing, and video games for musicians. Read more...
Britton Synder
I'm an artist with 10 years of experience in the video game development industry. Ever since I was a child, I've lost myself in creating worlds through drawing and found video games to be the perfect setting for that inclination. I have a strong interest and background in figurative art and painting which I am interested in applying towards video game development. I see games as modern art and am always interested in how to apply the lessons learned through observational drawing and painting towards a fun, interactive gameplay. Starting as an intern for Blizzard Entertainment, I have worked for Sony, Liquid Entertainment, RockStar Boston (formerly Mad Doc Software), THQ, Demiurge, and Seven45 Studios, a division of First Act. I have contributed to such games as Warcraft 3 (additional cinematics), Diablo 2 Expansion set (storyboard artist), Downhill Domination (cinematics), Dragonshard (artist), Empire Earth 2 expansion set (character artist), Empire Earth 3, WALL-E (artist), Mass Effect for PC (downloadable content and 3D artist), DeBlob (concept artist) and Word Fu for iPhone (artist) . In addition to my visual art, I am an active musician and enjoy skiing in our New England winter wonderland.
Matt Ward
I guess I'd be classified as more IM than GD within the IMGD program. I'm not really much of a gamer; Lemmings and Commander Keen are the kinds of games I've spent the most time on. However, I'm very interested in the underlying algorithms of computer graphics and animation, such as free-form deformation, kinematics, and modeling human motion. My research is more in the area of information visualization - how to communicate virtually any type of information in a visual way. I feel that people are much more able to comprehend complexity if they're presented a graphical depiction, whether it be the workings of the human genome, a million line software package, the traffic on the internet, the statistics of your favorite baseball team, or the contents of a digital library. As display devices become more and more ubiquitous, there are limitless possibilities for information visualization. All it takes is a good imagination, the skills to do graphics and user interface programming, and some understanding of the human perception and cognition systems. Read more...
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